Brian Behlendorf, one of the founders of the Apache web server project and the CollabNet cooperative software development company, is contracting now with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on the CONNECT software project. CONNECT helps hospitals and agencies exchange medical data, which gives doctors critical information to improve patient care.

Behlendorf, along with project leader David Riley, will speak
at OSCON about the importance of CONNECT and the way they and their colleagues built a robust community of government staff, volunteers, and healthcare IT vendors around it.

Behlendorf discusses the following in this 18-minute podcast:

The role of health data in promoting quality care, in improving our knowledge of what works, and in reducing healthcare costs.

How HHS is trying to improve the exchange of patient data for hospitals and doctors, agencies monitoring quality of care, and eventually patients themselves.

How, with Behlendorf’s help, HHS opened up the CONNECT project, attracted both volunteers and vendors to improve it, and created a community with a sense of ownership.

[around 8:00]
“I think many patients feel disconnected from their own health … I would say the majority of people out there view the maintenance of their health as a job they have outsourced to their doctor … having ways to look at [longitudinal] data … would give patients a much greater investment in their own health care, get them more involved, more proactive, and I think healthier.”

[around 10:00]
“making the patient a first class participant in the process”

- thinking prosumers vs. patients

I like the way he ends up with a linkage between greater health and greater wealth (or at least greater savings)

Thomas Weeks

The one with the fastest OODA Loop Wins! (ie. gains control). But one can’t control the OODA Loop of all the nodes in the system without the data from those nodes. Hence, projects arise everywhere to make your medical data transparent. It’s really quite simple.

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